The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya Page 5

  I ignored my sister as I lifted her by the waist and carried her out of my room. After ordering her to stay outside, I shut the door.

  “Mom. Kyon’s gone funny in the head—”

  It wasn’t long before I heard my sister shouting a potentially true statement as she headed downstairs.

  “Okay, Shamisen.”

  I sat down cross-legged as I spoke to the valuable male calico sitting on the floor.

  “I once told you to never speak again. But you can forget about that now. In fact, it would be very reassuring if you were to speak right now. So, Shamisen. Say something. Anything. You can talk philosophy or natural science or whatever. Doesn’t have to make sense. Just talk.”

  Shamisen glanced up at me with a disinterested look. He must have been really bored, since he started grooming himself.

  “… Do you understand what I’m saying? You can’t talk, but you can still hear me? Something like that? In that case, stick out your right paw for yes and your left paw for no.”

  I stuck my hand, palm up, in front of his nose. Shamisen sniffed at my hand for a bit, but as expected, I suppose, he showed no sign of understanding what I was saying and returned to his grooming.

  Well, yeah.

  He had only ever spoken while we were filming the movie, and only for a short time. He turned back into a normal cat the second we finished. He can only be associated with the verbs “eat,” “sleep,” and “play,” just like any other cat.

  I’ve learned one thing, at least. I’m not in a world with talking cats.

  “Duh?”

  Exhausted, I fell onto the bed and stretched. Cats weren’t talking. Which meant that the anomaly came when Shamisen was talking. Which meant that nothing was wrong now. But was that truly the case here?

  I wish I could become a cat. Then I wouldn’t have to think about any of this, and I could live true to my instincts.

  And there I lay, until my sister came to tell me that dinner was ready.

  CHAPTER 2

  A frozen December eighteenth came to an end, and another day began.

  December nineteenth.

  Starting today, classes would be shortened for the remainder of the year. This should have happened earlier, but our principal was angry about losing to our local rival in the national mock exam, so he forced the change while preaching about improving academic performance. That part of history hadn’t changed.

  The only changes were to my surroundings, North High, and anything SOS Brigade–related, huh? I continued on my trek to school, still caught up in somebody’s arbitrary scheme, and arrived to find that class 1-5 had more absentees today. Taniguchi’s temperature must have finally hit 104 degrees, since he was nowhere to be seen.

  And once again Asakura, not Haruhi, was sitting in the seat behind mine.

  “Good morning. Are you awake today? I hope you are.”

  “More or less.”

  I grimaced as I set my bag on my desk. Asakura rested her chin in her hands.

  “But opening your eyes doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re awake. You have to recognize what your eyes see before you can begin to understand. How about it? Do you have a grasp on your current circumstances?”

  “Asakura.”

  I gave Asakura’s pretty face a hard look.

  “Either you really don’t remember, or you’re just playing dumb, so let’s make this clear. Have you ever wanted to kill me?”

  Asakura’s face clouded in response. She was giving me that look you would give to sick people.

  “… It seems that you aren’t awake yet. I have some advice for you. You should check yourself into a hospital soon. Before it’s too late.”

  She proceeded to shut her mouth and ignore me as she began chatting with the girl who sat next to her.

  I turned back to the front of the classroom, crossed my arms, and glared at the air.

  How does this example sound?

  Let’s pretend that there was this very unfortunate person. Unfortunate in every possible way, subjective or objective, to the point where an enlightened Siddhartha in his later years would be forced to look away from this embodiment of misfortune, unlucky to the core. One day he (or she would work, but I’m lazy so he will do) fell asleep, as he always did in the midst of misfortune, and woke up the next day to find that the world had completely changed. A world so wonderful that calling it a utopia wouldn’t be enough to do it justice. A world where the misfortune in his life had been swept away, and his body and soul were now filled to the brim with joy. He would no longer suffer any further misfortune. In one night, some unknown person had sprung him from hell to heaven.

  Naturally, he had no say in the matter. He had been brought here by a stranger whose identity he couldn’t possibly guess. He couldn’t even manage a guess at the motive. It was likely that nobody knew the answer.

  So now, should he be happy about his current situation? The changes to the world had eliminated his misfortune. However, there were subtle differences from his former world, and the cause of the change remained a mystery.

  Should he be grateful to the unknown benefactor, after evaluating the situation to determine if he was now happy?

  I shouldn’t have to tell you that I’m not the person in the example. This story’s on a completely different level.

  Ah… I must say that I used a poor example. I hadn’t felt extremely unfortunate before yesterday, and I certainly didn’t feel very fortunate right now.

  However, if you ignore the scope of the matter, that example more or less covered my current situation. My nerves had been on a roller-coaster ride for the better part of this year, courtesy of the bizarre happenings associated with Haruhi, but that would no longer be a concern for me, apparently.

  However—

  Haruhi wasn’t here, Koizumi wasn’t here, Nagato and Asahina were ordinary humans, and the SOS Brigade had vanished without a trace. No aliens, time travel, or ESP. Forget about talking cats. This is an exceedingly ordinary world.

  So?

  Which one was a better fit for me? Which one would please me more?

  Was I happy right now?

  After school, I headed to the literary club room out of habit. If you do the same thing every day long enough, your body will move by itself, a typical example of automatic behavior. The same as how you unconsciously wash yourself in a certain order in the shower, like clockwork.

  Whenever class ended I would head for the SOS Brigade and drink Asahina’s tea while playing a game with Koizumi and listening to Haruhi’s incoherent babbling. Habits are hard to break, even the bad ones, or especially the bad ones, I suppose.

  But the mood was a little different today.

  “What do I do with this?”

  I was looking at the blank application form as I walked. Nagato probably gave this to me yesterday as an invitation to join the literary club. But I don’t know why she would invite me. Because there weren’t any other members and the club was in danger of getting cut? Still, it was gutsy of her to ask me to join her club after I came out of nowhere and practically assaulted her. I guess that Nagato is still an oddball in this messed-up world.

  “Wah.”

  I was on my way to the clubhouse when I passed by the Asahina/Tsuruya combo again. It pained me to see the lovely upperclassman jump and cling to Tsuruya the second she saw me, so I quickly bowed and left in a hurry. I can’t wait to return to drinking Asahina’s delicious tea on a daily basis.

  This time, I knocked and heard a soft reply. Only then did I open the door.

  In the clubroom, Nagato’s gaze swept across my facial epidermis before returning to the book before her. The act of pushing up her glasses almost looked like a greeting to me.

  “Was it okay for me to come back?”

  Her small head bobbed up and down. But her eyes remained focused on the open book and she never looked up.

  I dropped my bag and began looking around for something to do, but the desolate room didn’t provide much to w
ork with, so I was left to stare at the bookshelves.

  They were packed with books of all sizes. There were more hardcover books than paperbacks. I’d have to guess that this Nagato was also a fan of thick books.

  Silence.

  I should have been used to sitting in silence with Nagato, but under the circumstances it was agonizing. I had to say something or I’d have a meltdown.

  “Are these books all yours?”

  Her response came immediately.

  “Some were here before I joined.”

  Nagato showed me the cover of the hardback in her hands.

  “I borrowed this one. From the public library.”

  There was a bar code sticker to show that it belonged to the city. The laminated cover reflected the fluorescent light and for a second Nagato’s glasses were sparkling.

  That was the end of the conversation as Nagato returned to quietly reading her thick book and I was left feeling out of place.

  The silence was unbearably suffocating. I grasped for a random topic of conversation and blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

  “Do you ever write your own stories?”

  A three-quarter beat passed.

  “I only read.”

  Her eyes, hidden behind the lenses of her glasses, darted toward the computer for a moment, an action I didn’t miss. I see. That would explain what she was doing before I was allowed to use the computer. I became very interested in reading a story written by Nagato. What would she write? Science fiction, I suppose. She wouldn’t write romance, would she?

  “…”

  It’d always been difficult to start a conversation with Nagato. I could see that it wasn’t any different with this Nagato.

  I turned back to scanning the bookshelves in silence.

  My eyes happened to stop at the spine of a certain book.

  The title looked familiar. It was the first book of the long foreign sci-fi series that Nagato lent to me when the SOS Brigade was first established, the book with a scary amount of words. Now that I think about it, Nagato was still wearing glasses when she said, “I’ll lend you this,” and forced the book on me without waiting for my response. It took two weeks to read the whole thing. Feels like it was years ago. Too much has happened.

  Enticed by that curiously fond memory, I drew the hardcover from the shelf. I had no intention of reading while standing when I wasn’t in a bookstore, so I just flipped through the pages and was about to put the book back when a small rectangular piece of paper fell by my feet.

  “What?”

  I picked it up. It was a bookmark with an illustration of a flower. The kind bookstores put in your bag without asking—bookmark?

  It felt like the world was spinning around me. Yes… Back then… I opened this book in my room… And found something just like this bookmark… Then I took off on my bike… I could recite that phrase from memory.

  Seven PM. Waiting in the park in front of Kouyou Park Station.

  I held my breath as I turned the bookmark over with a trembling hand—and saw a message.

  “PROGRAM EXECUTE CONDITION—ASSEMBLE THE KEYS. FINAL DEADLINE—TWO DAYS”

  The bookmark that fell from the hardcover book had a message in Times New Roman print, just like the last one.

  I quickly spun around and took three steps toward the table where Nagato sat. I stared into her widening black pupils.

  “Were you the one who wrote this?”

  Nagato tilted her head as she gazed at the back of the bookmark I was holding out. She then turned to me with a puzzled look on her face.

  “It resembles my handwriting. But… I don’t recognize it. I don’t remember writing this.”

  “… I see. Thought so. Yeah, it’s okay. I’d be more worried if you did know what this was. I was just a little curious. Yeah, don’t mind me…”

  I wasn’t paying much attention as I made my excuses.

  Nagato.

  You did leave a message behind. I’ve never been happier to see such a cut-and-dried message. Was it safe to assume that this was a present from the Nagato I was familiar with? That this was a hint for dealing with the current situation? I mean, why else would she leave this note here?

  Program. Condition. Keys. Deadline. Two days.

  … Two days?

  Today was the nineteenth. Was I supposed to count two days from now or two days from yesterday, when the world went crazy? Worst-case scenario, the deadline would be the twentieth, tomorrow.

  The moment of joyous surprise was wearing off like lava slowly cooling. All I knew was that there was a program, and I would have to assemble the keys to execute it. But what were the keys? Where would I find them? How many were there? Where did I go to trade them all in for a prize?

  A flurry of question marks spun above my head before merging into one giant question mark.

  Would executing this program return the world to how it was before?

  I began pulling books from the shelf and returning them at a fast pace while checking to see if any other bookmarks might fall out. I worked busily under Nagato’s startled gaze for nada. There weren’t any others.

  “This is it, huh?”

  Well, if I get greedy and ask for too much, I’ll be weighed down and end up right back where I started. It’s a waste of time and your life gauge to run around using whatever you can find without settling on a destination. I have to start by figuring out the keys. I’m still a fair distance from the summit, but I’m starting to pick up on the correct direction to go.

  I opened my lunch box and set it on the table, after asking for permission, and ate my lunch, opening my mind to potential ideas while sitting diagonally across from Nagato. Nagato kept glancing my way, but I was busy operating my chopsticks in a mechanical fashion to carry nourishment to my brain cells.

  Once I finished lunch I was about to ask for tea when I remembered that Asahina wasn’t here, leaving me dejected but undeterred from my brainstorming. This was the moment of truth. I couldn’t let this hard-earned hint go to waste. Focus on the key, the key. Key, key…

  I must have spent two hours in deep thought.

  I was growing disgusted with my lack of brains as I began muttering to myself.

  “I have no idea.”

  Besides, “key” is a really ambiguous term. I really doubt she’s referring to the kind of key that’s used on locks. She probably means key as in “keyword” or “key person,” but that leaves a lot of area to cover. I wish she’d offered the option to choose from some extra hints regarding what I was looking for. Was it an item or was it a spoken line or was it something you could carry around? I tried to channel what Nagato had been thinking as she wrote on the bookmark, but I could only recall the sight of her reading some complicated book or delivering another helpful but tedious explanation, the Nagato we knew and loved.

  I suddenly had an urge to look diagonally across the table, and found that Nagato wasn’t moving, as though she had fallen asleep. And it seemed as though she was still on the same page in her book, though that might have just been my imagination. However, as if to prove that she wasn’t taking an afternoon nap, Nagato’s cheeks flushed in response to my absentminded staring. This version of the literary club member Nagato appeared to be extremely shy or unaccustomed to other people looking at her.

  It was rather refreshing to see a familiar-looking girl react in an unfamiliar way. I deliberately continued to observe her.

  “…”

  Her eyes were focused on the text in the book, but it was obvious that she wasn’t taking in a single word. Nagato’s mouth was slightly open as she breathed without making a sound and the subtle rise and fall of her chest was becoming more pronounced. Her slender cheeks were growing redder by the minute. To be honest, I found this Nagato to be fairly—no, incredibly—cute. For a moment I was almost tempted to just join the literary club and enjoy a world without Haruhi.

  But not yet. It was too early for me to give up. I took the bookmark from my pocket
and held it tightly while doing my best to avoid bending it. The fact that this piece of paper had been slipped into this world meant that the Nagato with the Santa hat still had business with me. I felt the same way. I hadn’t gotten a chance to try some of Haruhi’s hot pot yet, and I had never had enough time to burn the image of Asahina in a Santa outfit into my eyelids. We’d been busy decorating the clubroom so my game with Koizumi had been cut off at the best part. I probably would have won if we’d kept going, so I’d be missing out on a hundred yen the way things stood.

  A westering sun was shining through the window as we approached the time when the sun became a giant orange ball on its way to hide behind the school building.

  I was getting tired of sitting still, and I wasn’t going to be able to squeeze any more beneficial output from my head. I stood up and reached for my bag.

  “I’m going home for the day.”

  “I see.”

  Nagato shut the hardcover she was reading or not reading and slipped it into her book bag as she stood up. Had she been waiting for me to say something?

  With bag in hand, I turned to the figure that appeared ready to stay frozen in place until I took the first step.

  “Say, Nagato.”

  “What?”

  “You live by yourself, right?”

  “… Yes.”

  She was probably wondering how I knew that.

  I was going to ask about her family when I noticed her subtly downcast eyelashes. I recalled the room that barely had any furniture. My first visit had been seven months ago when her cosmic psychobabble on an epic scale had given me a jolt in more than one way. The next visit had come on Tanabata three years ago, and Asahina had been with me that time. The second visit actually came before the first one chronologically, so I obviously got skills.

  “How about getting a cat? Cats are great. They always act lazy, but you get a feeling that they can understand what you’re saying sometimes. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a talking cat. For real.”

  “No pets allowed.”

  And with that she fell silent with a wistful flutter of her eyes, but then she took a deep breath that sounded like a swallow slicing through the wind before speaking in a weak voice.